Ponting questions Tendulkar's role in Monkeygate scandal

While Sachin Tendulkar’s career is being celebrated across the cricketing world in light of his impending retirement next month, there is one man who has chosen the moment to question his role in the Monkeygate scandal. Writing in his autobiography The Close of Play, Ponting has written about the incident where Harbhajan Singh was charged with racial abuse for allegedly calling Andrew Symonds a monkey — before being cleared after Tendulkar’s changed testimony. Justice John Hansen from New Zealand saw Tendulkar as a key witness and heard his appeal which went a long way in Harbhajan Singh’s favour. [caption id=“attachment_1176935” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Sachin and Ponting. Getty Images[/caption] Justice Hansen’s decision stated that contrary to reports that Tendulkar heard nothing (he was quite far from the two when the argument happened and had said he heard nothing in the first appeal), the Little Master told him that he heard a heated exchange between Singh and Symonds but did not hear the word ‘monkey’ or ‘big monkey’. He did, however hear Harbhajan say ‘teri ma ki’. Tendulkar said it’s a term that sounds like ‘monkey’ and could be misinterpreted for ‘monkey’. In his book, Ponting says that was taken aback by Tendulkar’s actions: “I couldn’t understand why Sachin didn’t tell this to (match referee) Mike Procter in the first place,” he writes, as mentioned in a Daily Telegraph report. Ponting is not the first Australian who openly claims to be miffed with Tendulkar’s version. Adam Gilchrist also wrote in his book that Tendulkar’s changed story was a ‘joke’. “Maybe the Indian cricket juggernaut of the 21st century is too influential to shake. But then I thought about the way a number of people in the game had questioned our motives; how they thought we were just seeking an advantage rather than acting on principle. Five years later, the roles were reversed. I felt that there was a lot of hypocrisy about the ‘Monkeygate’ scandal. The Indians got him off the hook when they, of all people, should have been treating the matter of racial vilification with the utmost seriousness,” Ponting writes in his book. Click here to read the full report on Daily Telegraph.